Fact of the Day

Gayle Pergamit just finished speaking about nanotechnology and kidney disease and water filtering (abstract here). It went on for a long while, and I won't try to reproduce any of it here. She did, though, offer this offhand but interesting fact: "It takes as much water to produce a laptop as it does to produce an automobile." That's your fact of the day. I've gotta go get some caffeine.

Incidentally, Ms. Pergamit has been involved in nanotech for years; she co-wrote a book with Eric Drexler and Christine Peterson (founders of the Foresight Institute) back in 1991. That book, Unbounding the Future, is online here.

UPDATE: I wouldn't have thought we'd have another laptop factoid so soon, but here's one from the very next speaker, Chris Phoenix. If your laptop was built using nanotechnology, "It will be cleaner to dispose of your laptop by burning [it than it is] to drive your car today."